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Modern Warfare 2: You will lose your game!

Yes, most of you will lose it if you bought the game in other place than Steam or authorized retail stores. So if you bought your Modern Warfare 2 key of OnlineKeyStore or something similar (maybe G2Play?) you will lose your game from the Steam games list and you will never get it back!

 

Here’s a link to Steam Powered forums: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1031758

 

And here’s BurtonJ’s response:

Update:

Here’s what he did now:
nazi

Also right now it seems like he’s saying "You have to buy games in our 300% more expensive store, sorry mate."

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Comments

26 responses to “Modern Warfare 2: You will lose your game!”

  1. XanderCz Avatar
    XanderCz

    Dragoon you rock!

    Reply
  2. Dragoon Avatar
    Dragoon

    @Gnoupi

    To prove you wrong about the 1$=1€ and the lowest income took me 1 minute.
    http://www.worldsalaries.org/ They get their data directly form the government agencies.
    United States Average Employment Income
    Disposable $31,410 http://www.worldsalaries.org/usa.shtml
    UK Average Employment Income
    Disposable $26,312 http://www.worldsalaries.org/uk.shtml
    Germany Average Employment Income
    Disposable $25,146 http://www.worldsalaries.org/germany.shtm
    (Disposable means after paying taxes. They money they actually have to spent)

    Explain to me why USA and UK have usually much lower prices than Tier 1 or Tier 2 or even sometimes Tier 3?
    Once I called that IP-Racism and exactly that it is.

    About G2Play and other Resellers. First G2Play is not an Illegal shop.
    Understand G2play does NOT selling drugs or contraband of any kind. G2Play don’t sell goods that are forbidden, they sell software.
    All what G2Play ever has done was buying software in Singapore where Modern Warfare 2 cost 15€ and then resell it. G2play is a reseller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reseller If G2play would limit selling only to Singapore there wouldn’t be even a problem.
    It’s called free market! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market. That is the reason we have free market at all. To have competition, competition bring fair prices and better products. It made us strong.

    I give you an example to understand. I go to a farmer and ask him how much for the liter milk. He gives me a price I find it to high and I go to next farmer and he gives me a better deal. I then ship the milk to the city and where I make cash. Buy where prices are low to sell where prices are high. The basic of every merchant. Would you call me illegal for selling milk?
    You don’t call software companies illegal for cutting DVD’s in Asia and then shipping and selling them to EU or USA, don’t you? Reseller are not cheating like you claim, but the corporates does as they don’t allow us to have the same right they claim for themselves.
    Making profit is not enough. They want every damn penny we have in our pocket and suck you us dry like a vampire sitting my neck. Shame on them. They can lick my shoes.

    The funny thing is would G2Play resell copies bought in UK or Poland or any country inside the EU Activision/Valve couldn’t do anything about it because the EU Exhaustion of rights.
    The Exhaustion of rights allows a copyright holder (Activision) the right to chose when and how to sell a product. But inside the EU a copyright holder loose that right after the first sale.
    That means after the first time it is sold everyone can buy and sell the product the way he likes to everyone. Unfortunately this does not count to products imported from outside the EU and that is the true crime. Because they can manufacture and import products to the EU.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_import
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_of_rights
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

    Reply
  3. Gnoupi Avatar
    Gnoupi

    Simple fact for people complaining about regional/country pricing.

    Prices are what they can be. There are people spending all their time thinking these prices, according to the region, the money people earn, the amount of money they are ready to spend for the games.

    So yes, prices are not the same in different countries, leading to the 1€=1$ we all know. That annoys us mostly because we had it in the good direction. Let’s face it, we were able to buy games for cheaper than the “normal price”, we lost it, that’s why we complain.
    Price of games is what it is, some think it is the correct price (most of, if it’s selling at this price), some think it’s too expensive, but this is another debate.

    The problem here is that we consider the lowest price possible, from some country with lower income, as the “normal price”. But it’s not like this, this price was adapted, simply.

    If you absolutely want global, international pricing, you would get the highest one, simply. Prices are adapted low for some countries, they are not adapted higher for “richer countries”. If there was only one price for all, it would be like 50 euros for most new pc games, as it is the highest possible currently. Finally, even Steam was like that a year ago, proposing only one price. We were glad because conversion was 1.6$ for 1€, but if it was the opposite, we would have been begging for this 1$=1€. Think about it.

    These discussions about “illegal” shops like g2play or onlinekeystore are simply about that. They get their prices by cheating the regional system, that’s all. They get their games in the country where they can get them for the lowest price, and sell them for higher anyway.
    Sites like play.com get their prices by cheating the taxes system. There are plenty other examples.

    But these are not “normal prices”, that we would compare to “overpriced steam or else”. The real price is the regional one, the one matching (usually, I agree that some games are too expensive) to the people’s income. Keep that in mind.

    Reply
  4. Rad86N Avatar
    Rad86N

    Dragoon totally rocks these comments.. we as customers have no rights at all but big ass companies can do anything.. I buy cheap stuff from dealextreme.com and o-like.com, both are based in Hong Kong, yet they ship stuff to my address with no problems and almost no shipping fee.. I think that should be possible also with software products!

    Reply
  5. Toaster Avatar
    Toaster

    +rating for Gnoupi, kaczula and Dragoon. Good comment/points.

    Reply
  6. stranded Avatar
    stranded

    Good point there Dragoon

    Reply
  7. Dragoon Avatar
    Dragoon

    If you want have a deeper insight into “Parallel Market” or “Gray Market”,
    and how lawful the activity of Valve and Gray importers like G2Play is read the Wikipedia entry
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_import

    Also check out this very good Blog dedicated to the Parallel Market The Gray Blog

    To make it short: The European Union allows the doctrine of international exhaustion to exist between member states, but not outside the EU.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_of_rights

    So it legal to buy for cheap in the UK and play in Italy but you are screwed when you buy in Singapore.

    I still hope one day the EU will change that. I think it would benefit the economy more by creating more trade and more jobs overall than it would hurt the manufacturers revenue.

    I mean look what EA did. They produce their DVD’s in China as it is cheaper than to do it in USA but then sell the same DVD for a high price in USA.
    So why shouldn’t it be legal for the consumer what is legal for the corporate and buy there where it is cheap like Asia?
    Free market only for corporates, but protectionism for the end consumer?
    Who is the socialist now?
    Fuck you!

    Reply
  8. kaczula Avatar
    kaczula

    Well, the point is that the same thing (ban) happened for people who bought their boxed, retail copy in Asia (i.e. Singapore) came back to US and activated it there.

    Activision action is completely disgusting: if they wanted to prevent importing game from the cheaper markets, they should just block it on Steam from the start. There is nowhere (in the licence or so) stated that your game is region-locked.

    Key that you could buy on g2play activated and worked just fine. Then Activision realized that some group of people got this game cheaper (in fact they still paid for it and Activision got their cut!) and decided to cut those folks off giving some obscure explanation about ‘illegitimate retailers’ (wtf?)

    They should ban this scheme from the start, changing rules during the game is just not fair.

    Reply
  9. XanderCz Avatar
    XanderCz

    Umm I dont see them saying that they will remove the game from the ppl who bought the cd key. They are just saying we should get a refund and buy a LEGITIMATE copy. So basically they are just trying to put fear into us by saying we have not legitimate copy of the game.
    I say fuck them, fuck them hard.

    EDIT: Oh, I see… never mind

    Reply
  10. stranded Avatar
    stranded

    I understand what Valve/Activision did but this is another step for people to reach for the ONLINE WORKING torrent version of the game. I’ve heard that there’s a cracked version of the game that works online just fine.

    Guess what will those who lost the game do now?

    Reply
  11. Gnoupi Avatar
    Gnoupi

    Of course it’s pity for these guys who lost their money, but seriously, it’s not like they wouldn’t expect it.

    If it’s sold on Steam for 60 euros, and somewhere else, for 30 euros, for only a cdkey to activate on steam, it’s not obvious that there might be an issue?

    These sites (onlinekeystore, g2play) are selling illegally their keys, using any possible mean to get cheap boxes or lower prices. But people find it normal, that they are able to buy a key for half the price.

    Valve took the extreme measure, but it’s one of the only choices. To prevent people from buying there, they invalidate the keys.

    Fact is, for such a problem, you should whine to your key provider, not to Steam. They are at the origin of the problem, so they should give you another key, a working one, no?

    Reply
  12. EightySeven Avatar
    EightySeven

    no offense but they ask 30 euro on onlinkeystore (while u know its not entirely legal)

    u can buy the retail version for about the same price if u search well (uk stores mainly, even found it for 31 euro in the netherlands)

    Reply
  13. H4ndy Avatar
    H4ndy

    Funny thing is: We pay(ed) around 25-35€ for this game in online key stores -> Ban. You buy an UK-Import version for 30€+Shipping (~2-5€) -> No ban. I think I try to avoid Steam in the future if possible…

    Reply
  14. stranded Avatar
    stranded

    BurtonJ(erk)

    Reply
  15. joeangry Avatar
    joeangry

    okay, that’s an answer… We better download games illegally, they won…

    Reply

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